tawbubby

In their Santa hats…

And in their first of probably many baths together.

See you in 2007!

We enjoyed sleeping until 7:45 on Christmas morning. Amelia doesn’t know to get up earlier yet, in anticipation of what she might get under the tree. Grandma told us how we used to get up at 4:30 or 5am when we were little.

“Oh, Pwesents!”, and she didn’t mind waiting until everyone came downstairs.

Amelia in her santa hat.

Grandma, Grannie Annie, and Grampy Ray visited for Christmas. Here is Daphne and her Great Grandma!

Grampy Ray is showing Amelia his pig key chain with led light up nostrils and a very interesting oink sound.

Here is Grannie Annie with her two granddaughters.

Daphne got a quilt from Grannie for Christmas. She was born in the year of the dog, so the design is all dogs in houses with little hydrants. Grizzy seemed to know where to lie.

I think Amelia got three presents that make noise this year. Here is her saxoflute, a sort of puzzle instrument that you can put together and take apart in all sorts of ways. It reminds me of Dr. Seuss.

One of my favorite moments so far this weekend…we ‘caught’ Amelia reading Pat the Bunny to Daphne.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Well, in 45 minutes…

I took some pics of the girls yesterday and got one of Daphne smiling!

Amelia helped us trim the tree this year.

Every time we come down the stairs she says “Wow! The tree is decorated!”.

Here is DPJ with her cousin Jackson in their holiday finest. She is five weeks older than him (but was supposed to be a week or two younger!).

Jackie loved Daphne’s vibrating bouncey chair (below) and now Santa is bringing him one for Christmas.

Daphne started batting at toys in earnest last night, for maybe 40 minutes.

I watched her this morning and it is like a tennis match between batting her toys and playing with her hands. She really loves her hands together and near her mouth, with periodic detours back and forth to the toys. We notice left hand preferences but I don’t think that means anything at this point.

Amelia says “Snook snow!” when she is jumping in a pile of leaves. We don’t have any idea what that is, and where it came from. Today I turned her table upside down to tighten the screws that hold the legs to the top. She sat down on the underside and said “Snook snow!”. (Click on the “Visit the Flickr Annex” on the left.)
Now I’m really baffled.

What a cutie!

Sisters…

Amelia actually held Daphne for a minute or two before saying “Done!”. Daphne got several kisses and a great hug.

Amelia has more than one fairy princess costume. She got a new skirt this week that she loves. And an awesome hat that she wears ALL the time. She likes to wear all three of her necklaces (Jack-o-Lantern, jingle bell, and blue beads). She is really getting into accessories.

Here she is with the purple fairy skirt right out of the box. She ran for her other gear to put it all together: a Hawaiian lei, a feather boa, her wand, sometimes a sparkly purse and a head band.

She also thinks that “Kissmas” is for wearing fairy princess costumes (like Halloween). She will be pleasantly surprised as she learns all about the holiday. When she sees houses with lights she says “I see Kissmas!”.

We had our chimney inspected this week and made a fire tonight. Daphne is really enjoying watching it. She rolls from her back to side to back to side…and now has the hiccups.

Good news for us and our landfills: Amelia seems to be potty training herself. She pulled all of her big kid underpants out of her drawer last weekend, and has started talking about wanting to wear them. She asks to go potty once or twice every morning at preschool, and once or twice every afternoon at home. Today she asked four times and was successful each time! In the afternoon, she sat reading from her bag of birthday cards from all of you. She is so proud of herself and cheers and claps. This is shaping up to be a gradual but easy process.

Daphne had been refusing bottles. She and I had a two hour holdout Thursday morning until she took her bottle and that seems to be the turning point. She takes several a day now and with not too much twisting and fussing, often none.

Daphne hasn’t been a big smiler so far. Her smiles are dolled out on her own terms, I guess. Well, she got really generous recently.

Thursday night Daphne woke me up at 11:45pm, 3am, and 4:45am. I have no idea what was going on (she usually sleeps about 10 hours!) but at 4:45 I just decided to get up. At 6:30, she just started staring at me and smiling and “ahhh”ing softly. They were the most beautiful sounds I heard in, oh, about two years.
She did it again Friday night for a good 20 minutes.


Hooray for smiles!